The 2016 Crown Royal 400 at the Brickyard

Looking back at the weekend as a whole it belonged to Kyle Busch. He won the pole for both the XFINITY and the Sprint Cup races Saturday morning. He then easily won both the XFINITY heat race as well as the Lilly Diabetes 250. I don’t know many people that did not think that Kyle would win the Brickyard 400. It is racing and anything can happen, but Kyle was just too good it seems for any bad luck to find him this weekend. Maybe he was just too fast for the bad luck to catch him.

Two Legends Share One Moment

Two Indiana sports legends shared a great moment after the race yesterday. After the race was over we waited for Kyle Busch to come back around the track to celebrate. Instead of stopping Kyle just sped right back down the track. Then we heard two more engines coming and realized what it was about. Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon took one last lap around the Brickyard together. I am not going to lie. I am a big fan of both drivers. They were the reason that taking this assignment was worthwhile to me. I was amazing to stand on the platform shooting two guys that I admire. Thankfully they were part of the weekend story that I was there to cover. Their last Brickyard driving, and my first shooting.

My Thoughts On Photographing My First NASCAR Race

Overall this was a fun experience. I did not have the access that I would have liked to have had, but I still was able to make some photos that I really liked. Everyone at the track was amazing during the three days helping whenever and however they could. That is saying something because of the heat we were all in. That has to be the main story of the weekend. Everything that I did was shaped by the extreme heat. While waiting for the race to start yesterday out on the track I could feel the heat coming up through my shoes. Even in very poor conditions I had a great time out there. These guys put on a show that makes it easy to photograph. Hopefully this is the first of many times that I will be photographing a NASCAR race.

The Week in Photos

As I do every week I have put together some of my favorite photos from the past week into one Exposure post. This week of course is very heavy on the racing photos. In addition to photographing the racing on the big track I was also at the ARCA festivities at IRP as well. Here is a look at some photos that I enjoyed from the week.

About Pinola Photo

I am a sports and lifestyle photographer based in West Lafayette, IN home of Purdue University. I cover sports for Big Ten teams as well as other colleges. You can follow me on twitter @pinolaphoto. You can also view my website at www.davewegielphoto.net